Die redakteur, Nigel, het genoem dat hy sy pa, Harold Nicolson (1886-1968), se dagboek tot die laaste inskrywing van 4 Oktober 1964 sou publiseer (tweede boekdeel, p 15). Harold het opgehou met inskrywings "when the emptiness of his days left him with too little to record" (eerste boekdeel, p 13). Die derde boekdeel, Diaries and Letters, 1945-1962 (London: Collins, 1968, 448p) hou egter op met die kerkbyeenkoms op 5 Junie, na die dood van sy vrou, Vita. Nigel motiveer die vroeër einde van die teks soos volg: "His grief at her death can be imagined, but should not be laid bare" (derde boekdeel, p 23).
Hierdie laaste boekdeel handel oor die jare na die Tweede Wêreldoorlog. Toe het Harold hom veral met literêre en joernalistieke arbeid besig gehou. "My reputation rests not so much upon my political or literary work, as upon journalistic and broadcasting work" (p 81). In hierdie wanbalans het hy geen behae gehad nie. "How false and fleeting is journalistic popularity!" (p 259).
James Pope-Hennessy het in 1953 gesê Harold se "diary is too boring for words", maar Harold het daarmee voortgegaan want "it has become a habit, and it is useful for reference" (p 236). "Virginia Woolf ... rightly says that to a diary one entrusts a mood rather than an expression of continuous personality" (p 248). Oor 17 Januarie 1954 skryf Harold oor gemoedstemming in sy dagboek: "A happy day together – one of those beads on the necklace of my life that not even death of illness or madness or drink can destroy" (p 256) en oor 16 Mei 1955: "It is sad to see the blossom falling and to feel that I may never see it again" (p 283). Douglas Woodruff het gesê Harold se "real claim to immortality will not be my books, so much as my Diary. Poor chap! If he only realised what a pitiable little engagement book it is!" (p 321).
Harold: "I am amused to find in myself a fat grub of snobbishness. I have always hated the name ’nicolson' as being a common plebeian name" (p 141). In 1958 is Harold in ’n tydskrifartikel gekarakteriseer as "cultured, snobbish and urbane", dat "I ... do not possess the common touch nor understand the dust and roar of life." Sy verweer is: "I am writing for an educated public, and ... it would be absurd for me to put on a proletarian tone" (p 347). Later skryf hy: "Rich vulgarity is worse than poor vulgarity ... class-consciousness ... was not snobbishness but fastidiousness" (p 351).
Nigel, Harold se seun, verskaf die volgende definisie: "A snob is a person with an exaggerated respect for social position or wealth, who is ashamed of socially inferior connexions and tries to magnify his own importance by claiming an unfounded intimacy with the great" (p 16). Dít was Harold nie. Nigel: "Breeding and money hardly counted with him, except as an indication of what to expect. What mattered was that his friends should be intelligent and share his own values ... By values he meant taste ... and certain moral qualities, too, such as kindliness, truthfulness, modesty and tolerance ... he belonged to an intellectual élite" (p 16).
Aan sy skoondogter, Nigel se vrou, het Harold die Nicolsons gekarakteriseer as: "shy, eccentric untidy, but most benevolent" (p 239). Later skryf hy aan haar: "There is one thing that I feel we lack as a family, and that is social gaiety" (p 250). Elders het hy melding gemaak van "four things I most dislike: intruding upon the privacy of others; telling lies; being scolded; being made to look foolish" (p 104). In die politiek word waardes verdun: "There are times when wisdom becomes akin to caution, caution to expediency, and expediency to subordinating one's conscience to one's interest" (p 318).
Nigel: Harold "thought the great mass of the American people (like, indeed, his own) insensitive to the finer human qualities" (p 17). Volgens Harold is daar in Brittanje nie soseer anti-Amerikaanse sentiment nie as "that we are frightened that the destinies of the world should be in the hands of a giant with the limbs of an undergraduate, the emotions of a spinster and the brain of a pea-hen ... they [the Americans] idolise the common man and woman and we [the British] pay attention to the uncommon man" (p 243).
"I am convinced that the good life is successful activity in congenial surroundings ... the fullest expression of one's personality and the fullest exercise of those special gifts one happens to possess" (p 246). [In hoeverre is dit vir ’n Westerling in die misdaad-deurweekte nuwe Suid-Afrika moontlik? Oorweeg ook die geldigheid van die volgende stelling, na aanleiding van die gedwonge rasse-integrasie en gelyk- (en selfs eenders-) verklaring van mense in die nuwe Suid-Afrika.] "Highly developed civilisations specialise in variety, whereas lower civilisations impose uniformity" (p 381).
Na ’n besoek aan die Verre-Ooste in 1957 skryf Harold: "The East is no good at all except at poetry and art. I despise everything east of Suez (including Suez itself), with the exception of the Chinese, for whom I have a deep respect" (p 334). Oor die Japannese: "What an ugly, loathsome race" (p 364). In 1960 het hy Zanzibar besoek: "There are Moorish-looking houses and doors, but it shows one what miles ahead the Moors were artistically, since all the Slave Trade carvings are ill-shaped and crude" (p 378). Daarna is hy na Somalië: "It is madness to say that they [the Somalis] are ripe for self-government. It merely means corruption, impoverishment and cruelty. But the moment one is not prepared to shoot people for disobedience, one simply has to let them have their independence" (p 380). [Maar wie kon voorspel dat die suidpunt van die kontinent ’n halfeeu later vlugtelinge uit daardie oord (gewilliglik) in groot getalle sou absobeer?]
Winston Churchill het verwys na "'the inevitable genius of the British people'. But was it the British people? Was it not only the élite?" (p 102). Harold: "I am embarrassed at having to talk to uneducated people ... I hate hanging about making conversation when I want to read or work" (p 95). "I hate uneducated people having power" (p 30). "I do not like the masses in the flesh" (p 139). [Klaarblyklik sou hy bitter ongelukkig in die nuwe Suid-Afrika gewees het.] "I prefer the upper to the middle class" (p 386). In die Nicolson-huishouding was daar ’n spesiale woord vir die "attitudes and manners of the lower-middle class", naamlik "bedintness" (p 178). "I have no wish to be prominent and grand" (p 80). "It is sweet and decorous to pass unnoticed along the pavements or to sit unrecognised with other fellow-citizens upon an omnibus ... Pleasant indeed are the comforts of obscurity" (p 134). Hy het homself beskou as "belonging to the upper class" (p 120) en as ’n aristokraat (p 130).
As oud-diplomaat is Harold dikwels gevra om die Britse regering met buitelandse sake te help. By ’n byeenkoms van diplomate "I define the main quality as 'reliability', and analyse its five components as truthfulness, precision, loyalty, modesty and a sense of proportion. They ask me good questions afterwards. One is: 'If a foreign official asks one whether some important fact is true, what should one reply?' I say that if one doesn't know, one should reply, 'I have no idea at all'. But if one does know, one should say, 'You ought not to have asked me that question'. Another young man asks what one ought to do if a foreign official says that he will tell one something interesting if one undertakes not to pass it on. I say that one should answer, 'If what you are about to tell me is merely a piece of gossip of secondary importance, I promise not to repeat it. But if it is of vital importance, I am bound to inform my Ambassador – so you had better not tell me'" (p 43). [Hoe sou die nuwe Suid-Afrika se diplomate, wat regstellend en in sommige gevalle as vergoeding vir wandade tydens apartheid aangestel is, vergelykenderwys vaar?]
Harold het goeie insig as ’n politieke waarnemer openbaar, bv: "It is always the difficulty of the Leader of the Opposition that his Party wish to oppose always and do not realise that the leader has to consider what policy he would himself adopt if he were to become Prime Minister tomorrow" (p 333).
Die toestand van die Britse na-oorlogse massa herinner aan wat tans plaaslik ervaar word. "We shall only with the greatest difficulty convince the work-people of this country that they have got to work. They have no conception of the meaning of national wealth, and have been taught that it is merely the profits of the rich. They think that they can now be idle, and that in some manner the Government will provide" (p 43). "In the whole of history prosperity and full employment made for a rise in the standard, and therefore in the cost, of living" (p 335). "I am a believer in the value of individual effort" (p 205). [In Suid-Afrika is daar egter baie meer ontvangers van staatstoelaes as betalers van inkomstebelasting. Die wanverhouding is glo groter as in enige ander land en dit vererger jaarliks eksponensieel.] Daar is gesê "France may be badly governed but it is excellently administered" (p 302). [Maar kan ’n mens trots wees op ’n land wat sowel swak bestuur as swak geadministreer word?] Oorweeg ook in watter mate die volgende stelling geldig is: "The character of a government is determined by the character of the Prime Minister" (p 305).
Vervolg.
Johannes Comestor